The Boy Who Broke
by Sable Supernova
Summary: Harry is not the boy we all think he is. Instead, he's a violin with broken strings trying to make music. Everything is twisted, warped beyond recognition in his mind. We're all stories, in the end. Psychological!AU. One-shot.


_Inspiration taken from the fan theory by Magnus that Harry Potter is really just a boy in an asylum and all the events of the books happen inside his head. Anything else you recognise is JKRs, and I am not making profit from this story. The rest is my creation._

 **Prompts Taken From:**  
 **Chocolate Frog Card:** Harry Potter - Write about Harry Potter  
 **Gringotts Prompt Bank Forum:** "All the voices in my head will be quiet when I'm dead." - Mr. Gold, Once Upon a Time, "Just because you believe something is true does not make it real." - Emma, Once Upon a Time, "What a treacherous thing to believe, that a person is more than a person." - Paper Towns, John Green, "Maybe all the strings inside him broke." - Paper Towns, John Green, "Child"

 **Warnings:** Psychological!AU. Detailed descriptions of mental illnesses, electric shock therapy and mental health hospitals. Sensitive themes, violence and death all feature. Proceed at your own discretion, but not recommended for younger readers.

* * *

 **The Boy Who Broke**

A little boy with messy black hair sat on the floor of a bedroom, rocking gently. The door was only slightly ajar, and his parents looked in with mouths turned down as they frowned.

The little boy didn't see them. He had a stick in his right hand and his eyes were closed as he held it out in front of himself.

"No, I don't believe you," he mumbled, almost inaudibly. His parents didn't have to wonder who he was talking to. They knew there was no one there but him.

"But... But magic? That's impossible!" he argued, looking to his right and frowning, though his eyes were still squeezed shut. He spent more and more of his waking hours with his eyes shut. He didn't want to see the real world, the bedroom they'd given him. He insisted on sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, but they made sure he spent as much time in his bedroom as possible. The walls were recently painted in shades of red, his new favourite colour. The beech wood of the bedframe looked almost gold beside the bright colour. All of his toys lay scattered around the room, most thrown in anger. Most not played with. He incessantly turned to the old barbie of a cousin, with curly brown hair and a school uniform on. Beside her lay two action figures. One, with red hair, was an old soldier, except he'd torn the gun from his hands and changed its clothes to some old rags, hastily sown together. The other was am Action Man, a popular toy. His clothes were far too big from him, stolen from some other doll, and he'd drawn glasses on its face. This one, his parents knew, was supposed to be him. Their son. Or, rather, the child their son imagined he was.

Was the life they had given him not enough? Had they not loved him enough? His mother felt tears sting her eyes as she watched her son grin, laughing breathily, as he held the dirty stick higher. In his mind, they knew, he was making things happen all around him. In the real world, he was just a little boy with a piece of wood and a vivid imagination. She turned and sobbed into her husband's shoulder as his arm reached comfortingly around her waist.

The sound of her sorrow roused her son from his reverie. He turned on them, his smile disappearing, and furrowed his brow.

"Son?" his father asked, bending slightly, waiting for his response.

"You're not my father," the boy said, simply. Vernon sighed and steeled himself. Sometimes, the only way to get through to him was to play the game.

"Harry, what... what are you doing?" he asked as his wife gathered her courage and peeled herself from his side, forcing herself to smile at the boy.

"I'm playing. I know I'm not allowed in Dudley's second bedroom, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset anyone!" Harry was suddenly nervous and agitated, standing and backing away from his parents. "I didn't touch anything! Please don't send me back to the cupboard!"

Petunia stepped forward with a calming hand held out in front of her. "Harry, it's okay. This is your bedroom. We aren't sending you anywhere."

"My bedroom?" he asked, looking confused. Hope found its way into Vernon's heart. It seemed his son was close to a break through. "You're giving it to me?" Just as quickly as the hope appeared, it disappeared.

"Yes," Petunia suddenly said, smiling. Maybe this was the way back into his imaginary good books.

"Th... thank you," he said, wary. "I'll be going to school soon, so I can start learning magic. We need to go to Diagon Alley," he told them, hoping he wasn't pushing his luck.

Petunia and Vernon backed away, sorrowful, knowing there was nothing they could say now. They shut the door on him softly and turned to look at each other. Petunia tried as hard as she could not to cry, but still solitary tears escaped down her cheeks.

"He's getting worse, Vernon," Petunia said, her voice cracking over the words.

"I know," he nodded. "We need to speak to his doctor again. We need to do something."

"I can't cope with him anymore, Vernon. I can't..." Unable to finish her sentence, Petunia broke down in a fit of sobs. Her husband held her close, though tears formed in his own eyes. "He's our son," she choked.

 **-o0o-**

"Here at Haugh Courts, we'll provide the best care for your son," the man said, smiling with perfect white teeth over his spectacles. His name plate read, "Albert", and Petunia wondered how closely involved he would be involved with Harry's care.

"What does that care entail?" Vernon asked, taking his wife's hand. They wanted to know exactly what would be going on when they weren't there.

"Well, Harry will first go through a series of sessions where we'll get him to talk about his imagined reality. We'll be writing it all down and figuring out the story, the characters - everything that makes the world real to him. We'll need you to talk us through Harry's childhood - the good and the bad. We should then be able to draw parallels between the two worlds and work out what relates to what. That should lead us to why he created this world in the first place." Albert sighed as he brought his hands together in front of him. He was still smiling, and Petunia wanted to tear that smile right off his face. How could he smile through an explanation of a child's ruined life?

"After that, we'll be looking for inconsistencies in his world. Little things that can shake his belief just enough to break through to him. Once we've broken through, we can them give him sessions with a child psychologist, who'll be able to talk to Harry about his issues and their solutions, and give him a guiding hand back into the real world and out of his fantasies for good. It's a long process, and it will be very confusing for Harry, but it's success depends entirely on his cooperation."

"What if it doesn't work?" Petunia asked, her faith in Harry's cooperativeness wavering.

"We'll come to that if we get there," Albert smiled.

Neither Petunia or Vernon could think of any more questions to ask. They didn't know anything about psychosis, and the leaflets they'd been given were so patronising it made them feel sick.

"Now, you say he attacked his brother? His twin?" Albert asked, glancing down at Harry's patient file.

"Yes, not that he recognises Dudley as his twin anymore," Vernon responded.

"Okay. So, we'll have to sedate him for a while until he calms down. Here's the leaflets about the medications we're putting him on."

Albert handed out a small stack, which Petunia took.

"If there's nothing else, I'll let you be on your way. Visiting will begin once he's settled in, probably in a couple of weeks' time."

Petunia found herself being ushered out of the building very quickly, as if their presence was disruptive, and they should let the clever doctors get on and do their work. It filled her with an impending sense of dread as they walked to the car.

"Vernon, they still don't know what it is. They don't know what's wrong with him," she admitted in the car park, in front of their car, voicing her fears that they'll never figure it out.

"It's some kind of psychosis, they know that," he tried to explain. "Look, you heard the doctor, the mind is a fragile thing. It could be one of a number of things, and they need to dig deeper to understand it."

"A fragile thing," Petunia echoed, sighing. "Maybe that's it. The mind, it's a fragile thing, like a violin. When it's well looked after, and tuned, and the player is in control of it, it's beautiful. An aria. And when it's not, it's... Maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe all the strings inside him broke." The all too familiar prickling sensation took over the corners of her eyes once more.

"Oh, Petunia," Vernon said, pulling her into an embrace. "Maybe we need to stop thinking about what's wrong with him and instead, we should focus on how to help him get better. We need to work to get our son back, not work out why we lost him."

Petunia nodded and pulled away.

 **-o0o-**

Two doctors stood staring through a two-way mirror into a white room. Harry sat on the bed, eyes closed, unmoving. Albert sighed as he watched, while the woman tilted her head slightly, her eyes betraying her sadness.

"Harry Dursley. Eleven years old. His psychosis is deep. Deeper than I've ever seen in a child his age," Albert said, his words clinical but his voice heavy.

"What a treacherous thing to believe, that a person is more than a person," the woman, whose name badge claimed 'Amelia' said.

"Even more treacherous when that person is oneself."

"Can we help him?" Amelia asked, turning her green eyes on the doctor.

"I don't know, Minnie. I honestly don't. But we're going to try."

Amelia nodded, the wrinkles on her neck becoming more pronounced, just for a second. "I should go and introduce myself," she announced, before turning from the mirror towards the door.

She took a deep breath before turning the handle, knowing Albert would be watching the whole exchange, ready to let her out. She always thought it was sad that the doors only had handles on the outside, even though it was necessary.

Stepping into the room, the boy didn't move. Perhaps he didn't hear her, so engrossed as he was in his fantasies. He was skinny, smaller than the average eleven year old. His parents had told them he'd stopped eating a few months ago and the weight had just fallen off him. Harry claimed they didn't feed him enough, and was angry at them.

"Hello, Harry Dursley," Amelia said softly, waiting for the boy to open his eyes.

He did so with a frown, and turned to consider her. "I'm Harry Potter," he told her.

"Well, nice to meet you, Harry Potter. I'm Amelia McGenniss. You can call me Minnie," she said with a smile, bending her knees so she was looking right into his face.

"Hello," he said. "Are you a Professor?" he asked.

"I'm usually a Doctor," she told him with a little giggle.

"Adults always lie," he replied.

"Okay. Who am I?"

Harry thought for a moment, considering that. He scrutinised her like he had her under a microscope. "You're the Head of Gryffindor, my House here. You teach Transfiguration. Professor Minerva McGonagall. You can turn into a cat," he told her.

"Oh, can I?" Amelia asked.

"Yes. You're a strict teacher, but you're kind. But I'm telling you things you already know," he said.

"Of course you are," she said back with a smile.

She was glad the boy had so readily accepted her as a part of his world. That meant he'd tell her more about it. It would make her job easier over the coming weeks, if he believed she believed.

"Well, it was lovely meeting you, Harry Potter, but I have to go now. I have a... class to teach," she told him, and began to stand.

"Goodbye, Professor," the boy said. Amelia turned around to look at him once more, just as his eyes closed again.

 **-o0o-**

Albert and Amelia sat side by side with a large file in front of them, on the desk that separated them from Mr and Mrs Dursley.

"We've begun to piece together a lot of Harry's world, and what's happened there. Amelia here has been involved in most of the one-to-one work with him, and making the notes. Now, we're beginning to piece together how it fits in with Harry's real life, and what the metaphors mean," Albert began, taking control of the revelations.

"We believe it started with his imagined parents, James and Lily Potter. At first, they were probably normal people to him, without magic. We think he felt as though he didn't belong, at home. Like he wasn't the son you wanted." Petunia drew in a sharp breath at the doctor's words. "Please, don't be alarmed. This has probably got nothing to do with your parenting. He's an imaginative child. It's likely to all be in his head. All children have a need to be special and, as a twin, it's likely he didn't feel special. He wasn't unique."

Before Petunia could interrupt, Amelia continued the explanation. "Now, in this world, he's created a war. There's a powerful dark wizard out to kill Harry. This wizard, Lord Voldemort, seems to represent Harry's own darkness. He's even put a part of Voldemort's soul into Harry Potter. It's the part of him that attacked Dudley, the part that he's afraid of. The stronger Harry feels, the weaker Voldemort is.

"There's a doctor here, Simon, who had a session with Harry a few weeks ago. They touched on some things that were emotional for Harry, and your son grew angry. In Harry's world, Simon is a Professor at the school named Severus, and Harry believes he's working with Lord Voldemort. This spurred on our theory, because Simon unleashed Harry's darkness, and now Harry thinks Severus is on Voldemort's side," Amelia explained, hoping that the Dursleys had followed her words. She'd been so invested in Harry, working with him every day, that she knew his world better than anyone. She was worried she hadn't explained everything she needed to, because it was all beginning to make sense to her.

"The school itself, Hogwarts, is a representation of this place, Haugh Courts. The names even sound similar. He does that a lot," Albert took over. Petunia and Vernon were looking more and more concerned as the doctors spoke, hearing for the first time the intricate detail of Harry's world. It shocked them just how much thought had gone into it.

"This world is so full, what happens when a small part of it falls through? What if he can't imagine his way out of a situation?" Vernon asked, attempting to understand, but fearing the worst.

"His psychosis is so deep that if it were all to suddenly fall apart, he'd be... in a worse condition than he is now. We need to feed the psychosis before we can free him," Albert carefully explained.

"It seems his family, you, are the only ones who get to keep their real names. Your personalities have been twisted almost beyond recognition, but your names are the same. This shows how Harry's psychosis has deepened over time," Amelia told them, trying to make them understand. She wondered how much of it really sunk in.

They spent a long time discussing Harry's condition, and his spiderweb of a world. Amelia and Albert explained everything they'd been able to work out so far. All the links they had managed to make, and the ones they hadn't.

"What next?" Petunia finally asked, her voice set hard. She was trying to control her emotions, straining herself to hold the flood of tears in, and instead she sounded angry.

Amelia looked at Albert, at his tired blue eyes, and turned back to the parents.

"Well, denting his armour, trying to point out holes in his world, isn't working as well as we hoped. Albert here has been trying, but every question he's asked so far, your son has been able to explain away. That's one of the problems with his world being a world of magic. Anything is possible."

"So?" Vernon prompted, noting that Amelia hadn't answered the question.

Albert sighed heavily. "We aren't sure. We're going to keep trying, with this method, but we think there may be a need, in the future, to try electric shock therapy." Petunia didn't hold back her shock, raising her hand to her mouth as she gasped. "I know it seems severe, but the therapy brings the patient wholly into the present. We'll be able to talk to Harry Dursley instead of Harry Potter, and hopefully make some headway into his recovery."

"My boy," Petunia whispered, imagining the horrors the treatment entailed.

"We're hoping it won't come to that," Amelia added.

 **-o0o-**

 _June 30th, 1993_

Dear Dr Blake,

I am writing to ask your involvement in a case here at Haugh Courts. Harry Dursley has been a patient here since September 1991, under the care of Dr Dartmoor and myself, Dr McGenniss.

He's currently twelve years old, and has been exhibiting symptoms of deep psychosis since he was ten. He's invented a magical world where he is Harry Potter, a Chosen One, meant to defeat a Dark Wizard. We've done extensive research into his world and the links between it and his home life, though we have as yet been unable to break his psychosis or make him understand that this world may not be real.

We are hoping you will be interesting in aiding the treatment of Harry as our methods so far have proven unsuccessful. As the leading expert in the UK on similar conditions, we believe you may be able to offer us some insight.

He has so far been treated with Aripiprazole, Clozapine and Olanzapine, all of which have proven unsuccessful. We have attempted to treat him with SSRIs and SNRIs to no effect, and he is now taking regular small doses of amitriptyline. He has been prescribed with promethazine since he first arrived here. Aside from this, he has daily sessions with myself where we explore his world, and daily sessions with Dr Dartmoor to explore the connected emotions, and memories of his childhood. While these sessions seem successful, they have yet to yield any noticeable results.

When he first began taking Aripiprazole, we noticed a marked improvement, in May last year. He was much happier and appeared to have set his fantasies aside, and he was allowed visits home throughout the summer. By September, we had to bring him back under our full-time care. Over the course of the past ten months, he became friends with another patient here, eleven year old Penny White. However, he began to grow fearful that she was under threat from his Dark Wizard, which we know to be a representation of his own darkness, and for this reason, the pair were separated. During the separation, Harry's fear overtook him and he escaped from his locked room on a mission to save her, and in turn caused her grievous bodily harm. Harry is now once again under full-time supervision and his medication doses have been temporarily increased.

We at Haugh Courts patiently await your reply.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr Amelia McGenniss

 **-o0o-**

Amelia stood beside Albert, looking into the two-way mirror. Harry was sat where he had been the first day she'd seen him, on the edge of the bed with his eyes tight shut. He had been still then, and small. He was older now, with broad shoulders that wouldn't keep still. He was rocking back and forwards, jerking around as if there were noises shocking him from all around. She supposed, in his head, there were.

"Has it really been four years?" Amelia asked, glancing briefly at Albert.

"More than, now. He's getting worse," Albert replied with a sigh. Amelia brushed a greying lock of hair over her shoulder out of her way.

"I wish Dr Blake was still here," Amelia noted.

"He'll be back," Albert told her. It was true. Silas was still visiting the boy. He had a fondness of Harry, and Harry had begun to see him as a father figure, even writing him into his magical narrative. But Silas had other patients in other hospitals, and couldn't always be around. Harry didn't seem to mind too much, so long as he came back.

"I know," Amelia replied. "Any ideas who this Cedric Diggory might be?"

"Actually, I did have an idea. His description... there's no boy here that matches it, at least, no one closer than Harry himself. And their both in this... competition, that will only accept three participants, right? So, I think that Cedric might be similar to Voldemort. A self-projection. Cedric is kind-hearted, friendly, well-loved. I think he's the perfect son metaphor. The person Harry wants to be, untouched by darkness."

"That... makes sense," Amelia reasoned.

"It does. It makes me think that Cedric and Voldemort may meet each other in combat, and we have to make sure that Cedric wins. It'll give him a chance to get back to that person. It's already May, so it's likely to happen soon."

"What's so significant about May?" Amelia asked.

"It's the time of year, late May, early June, when everything has always come to an ultimate battle with Harry. His temporary defeat of Voldemort in '92; his desperate attempt to save Penny - sorry, Ginny - in '93. Even his attempt to save the convict when Silas almost walked out of the project in '94. Something's coming soon, you can count on it."

Amelia frowned. "Harry is not a project."

Albert closed his eyes and sighed. "Of course not. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

Amelia said nothing as she allowed herself into Harry's room.

"Hello, Harry," she greeted. He jerked his head up quickly, opening his eyes wide to look at her.

"Hello, Professor," he said, his voice flat and toneless. His fingers danced together between his knees, bending this way and that, as his left foot tapped relentlessly on the tiles.

"What's going on with Cedric then?" she asked, wondering where the story was up to.

"It's the final challenge tomorrow," he told her, a twitch in his neck gave his head jerks to the right as he looked at her. He was always moving these days, always on edge. It made Amelia concerned that bringing him here had perhaps not been the best choice for him. "A maze. I think Voldemort has a plan."

"Do you know what's going to happen, Harry?" she asked, wondering if Cedric would make it out alive.

"I'm not a Seer. I don't have the gift. I don't know what's going to happen," Harry replied.

Of course not," Amelia said with a sigh. She would just have to wait.

 **-o0o-**

"Cedric died," Amelia told Albert, her matter-of-fact tone a façade for her pain.

"He did," Albert commented, not looking at Amelia.

"What does that mean? Does it mean Harry will never be well? Never get back to the person he was, the person he could be?" Amelia asked, a sense of urgency suddenly taking over her, as if it was the last shred of hope she'd been holding on to.

"I don't know. We'll just have to see how it plays out."

"I think we need to bring his parents in. I think we need to talk about electric shock therapy," Amelia decided, firming her resolve with her desperate desire to help the boy she'd grown so fond of.

"I think you're right," Albert agreed, raising his eyebrows. "It's a shame, you know. With that imagination, he'd have made a great writer."

 **-o0o-**

Harry sat in the chair, heavily sedated, his eyes closed. Amelia sat beside him as the nurse attached the electrodes, holding his hand. His parents were watching through the two-way mirror. She hoped they saw how much she'd come to care for him. It took them many years to agree to the treatment, as hope faded further and further towards the horizon. Amelia and Albert worried it was too late, that nothing could save Harry now, but they weren't opposed to trying.

The first shocked jolted his eyes open as he let out a wail of terror. His eyes were wide in fear, his breath hitched. Amelia was taken aback. This wasn't the weary soul she'd grown so used to, this was a frightened boy.

"Harry? Harry, can you hear me?" she asked, reaching out to his brow to soothe him.

He looked at her, and it took his eyes a moment to focus before he frowned. "Min... Amelia?" he asked before his eyes rolled back in his head. "Professor?"

Amelia closed her eyes in despair. He was almost here. Almost.

The second jolt, he was more prepared for, but that didn't stop his screams. The boy opened his eyes again and looked at her in panic.

"It's okay, Harry. Can we talk?" she asked, hoping she could keep him around long enough to get through to him.

He nodded as sweat pooled on his brow.

"Do you remember Harry Potter?" she asked. For a second, it looked as though he would revert, but he focused on her once again and nodded his head.

"Harry, I want you to understand something. Just because you believe something is true does not make it real," she explained. He stared at her, confused, before his brow smoothed. He smiled in understanding.

Then, he frowned again. "What are you saying, Professor?"

Third time lucky. This time, when the pain was over, he grinned at her. "All the voices in my head will be quiet when I'm dead," he announced, loudly, before he closed his eyes once more.

"Harry?" she called out again, but the boy didn't hear her.

The fourth time, they upped the voltage, and it put undue strain on him. For a moment, for just a few seconds, his heart stopped beating.

Amelia jumped to action, backing away from the doctors with the defibrillators but desperate to help. She felt like, in that moment, she knew what it was like to be a mother.

When he came around, he was calm. Peaceful. But it didn't last too long. Harry Potter was back. They asked if they should try one more time, if they should give it one last shot.

"No," Amelia screamed, tears coming easily to her eyes as she grasped his hand.

"Yes," Petunia Dursley said. For a moment, for just one moment, the two women looked at each other with hatred in their eyes.

They tried once more.

This time, Harry Dursley opened his tired eyes and smiled, weakly. "Harry Potter won," he announced, before falling back on his pillow to sleep.

 **-o0o-**

Harry wasn't the boy he used to be. He wasn't the man he could have been, either. But he was here, in the real world, making real progress. It had almost been too late. The medication became a part of his life, as regular as brushing his teeth. But he was able to go home, and enjoy what was left of his life, eventually.

It was many months later, in a therapy session with a new doctor, that Harry admitted one last thing he'd done.

He'd gone back into his fantasy world, to the lives of Harry Potter and his friends, and given them all happy endings. He knew that, if it were real, things wouldn't have been that simple. There would have been new enemies, new challenges, new struggles. He just no longer felt compelled to think them up. As his relationship with Penny, the girl he'd known in his second year at Haugh Courts, grew into something more, he gave Harry Potter Ginny as a wife, and they had three beautiful children. He admitted that going back into his world felt a little bit like going home, back into somewhere familiar and comforting. He also admitted that giving them their happy endings felt like a final goodbye. He didn't have to worry about them anymore. They were fine, and for the most part, they still had each other. All was well.

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 **AN: Please allow me to take a moment of your time to say I am immensely proud of this story and the way it turned out, and it would make me so very grateful if you could leave me a review and let me know what you thought - good or bad. I'm just a humble writer and it would really make my day :)**

 **AN2: I would also like to say that I know, Harry and Dudley are not twins. Of course not. But, their birthdays are close, and I reason this in two ways. One: The Dursleys celebrated the two birthdays on two different days so as to make them all the more special. Two: Having a twin makes Harry think he's not unique, so in his world, he doesn't have a twin. He has an ugly cousin.**

 **And, a final note, no, I don't explain what made Harry this way. I think that would take a whole other one-shot to go into that much detail. For someone as ill as Harry is, it would take a lot to make him that way - we're not talking one big event, we're talking lots of little ones that were blown out of proportion in his head. I'll leave the details to your lovely imaginations.**


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